Author Archive | David Bernstein

I appeared on this radio this weekend discussing hate speech, free speech, and the Mohammed cartoons, and you can find my interview on the show’s website. Scroll to “speech impediment,” and, after clicking on the link, go to approximately 2:45. Unfortunately, if you keep listening, you will find that the next guest is Juan Cole, […]

Page A9 of today’s Journal contains my Rule of Law Column, which begins as follows: According to its mission statement, a primary goal of the American Bar Association is to “promote respect for the law.” In the interest of mandating racial preferences in admissions, however, the ABA is about to order law schools to do […]

From the Forward:”During the 1970s, none of us had qualms about ‘moral equivalency,’ an issue debated by the Israeli characters in ‘Munich.’ Palestinian terrorists were killing innocent civilians; in response, Israel was targeting only terrorists and the terrorist infrastructure.”

The Chicago branch of Lawyers’ Committee for Civil Rights Under Law is suing Craigslist for running housing ads that allegedly violated the federal Fair Housing Act. An important issue in this lawsuit is whether the Fair Housing Act’s restrictions on discriminatory advertising apply to an electronic “bulletin board” such as Craigslist. I don’t have an […]

Joseph Massad of Columbia, one of the Middle East Studies professors embroiled in a controversy over alleged anti-Semitism, has been promoted to associate professor, though not yet tenured. As I’ve suggested before, the allegations of anti-Semitism, which are, in part, an attempt by some members of the Jewish community to play the minority-victim card [update: […]

[Circa 2002-2003] many Palestinian groups, left-wing political parties (such as the Socialist People’s Party, the Unity List and the Communist Party) and NGOs (such as the International Forum and the Anti-fascist Association), together with trade unions, launched a nation-wide campaign to boycott Israel. The boycott, which includes farm produce and manufactured goods, as well as […]

I’ve read quite a bit about the Hollywood blacklist lately, but the answer to an obvious question has been surprisingly elusive: what percentage of those blacklisted were members of the Communist Party of the United States at the time of their blacklisting? A secondary question is, of those who weren’t members of the CPUSA at […]

“Meanwhile in Al Jumhuriya [Egyptian newspaper].” “Excellent cartoon Ahmad.” Via HonestReporting, this cartoon appeared in Ha’aretz yesterday.

but I still remember that in 2002, in response to Israel (finally) taking decisive military action against a wave of terrorist suicide-murders, the Danish General Workers Union canceled an order from an Israeli company, and announced that “we call for the hundreds of thousands of members of the union to refrain from buying products manufactured […]

Among the many ignorant things arising out of the Mohammed cartoon controversy is the claim emanating from many quarters in the Muslim world that if the target of the cartoons had been important to “the Jews,” European governments would have cracked down on the individuals involved. There are many levels to this ignorance (e.g., those […]

I’ve been wondering what Natan Sharansky, champion of Middle East democratization, has to say about the Hamas election victory. You might have been, too. Ha’aretz has the scoop. Essentially, he argues that to have real democracy, you need a free society, not just free elections. The Palestinians had free elections, but no free society. A […]

Given that newspapers, bloggers, t.v. stations, etc. in all Western countries have now published or shown the offending Mohammed illustrations, and given that the public in many Muslim countries doesn’t seem to distinguish between what individuals do and their countries (given that the state apparently has an obligation to censor “blasphemy”), it strikes me that […]

Why “the Zionists,” of course. (From a newspaper in Bahrain, courtesy of the ADL: the cartoon claims the controversy was a result of “The Penetration of Zionism to Denmark.” The cheese, shaped like a Star of David, is labeled “Danish products.” The text on the far left reads, “Boycott it!”) ) UPDATE: Michelle Malkin is […]

Gabriel Schoenfeld launches a powerful attack on “Munich” in Commentary. A small taste: “Spielberg has said that he made Munich out of a simple desire to commemorate the slaughtered Jews of Munich…. Shortly before Munich was released, Steven Spielberg told an interviewer: ‘I worked very hard so this film was not in any way, shape, […]

I hope all the American advocates of purportedly modest hate speech laws have a darn good explanation of why the caricatures of Mohammed in European newspapers don’t constitute “words that wound,” “assaultive speech,” and speech with regard to which “the [Muslim] victim’s story” should be considered paramount. If you can ban these caricatures under these […]